When empires arise throughout history, people who succumb to their ruling classes are “shackled,” “colonized,” “civilized” and “protected” from themselves and their own “weaknesses” by the tyrants of the time. There is one law, to which all of us in this world are subject, which is that we cannot be dominated if we are not subjugated by force. A ruling class must seize our countries, our markets, our labor power as their property and force us to spill our blood and that of other workers and the oppressed during wars of conquest in order to maximize the extraction of all possible wealth possible.

When empires decline, rebellions inevitably begin, and with the ousting of rulers the oppressed can reclaim and rebuild their own land. The prisons and jails are opened; people flow into the streets and break the barricades that until then were invisible. They ignite the fires of liberation in order to be rulers in their own land, revive their culture and take pride in who they are.

There are 50 million Latinos in the United States. A huge majority of them are Mexicanos and their brothers and sisters in history, the Central Americans, and their cousins, the South Americans. They are the sons, heirs and hostages of “Manifest Destiny,” the plan for a US empire that plundered the still young, inexperienced, weak and semi-unpopulated nations and peoples of Old Mexico and everywhere south of the USA.

The labor aristocracy and the labor bureaucracy are the most difficult obstacles to overcome to advance the mass movement in the midst of a situation of deep crisis of the capitalist economy and social breakdown.

In places as different as Europe, the United States or Argentina, in the face of this political, economic or social crisis one can perceive the absence of an organized workers’ movement possessing a concrete political program and a leadership that having realized the depth of the changes in the world, mobilizes massively, providing leadership for all of the classes of society affected by the crisis of capitalism and formulates a workers’ socialist alternative.

Without concrete political program and effective leadership, there may be mass protests that can cause an imbalance and even the replacement of governments or political parties in power, however it will not achieve a change of system for one that would guarantee full employment, a sustainable economy, good salaries, quality education and housing, and universal health care for all.

Mexico is now looking into “a deep dark hole that leads to nowhere.” In a real war for the control over narco criminal enterprises, where the drug cartels and the governments of both Mexico and United States play leading roles, the entire population suffers from the horrors of war on a daily basis.

The talk about narco-corridos, narco-trucks, narco-fosas, narco-ranchos1, etc. has become commonplace and no one is shocked by it anymore. The daily news reports of hangings, burnings, corpses littering the large avenues, reports of those missing and abducted, narco-funded churches, military troops guarding different cities, new discoveries of drug plantations or huge drug shipments aren’t news to anyone either.

Nor is anybody surprised by the daily clashes of narcos against narcos, narcos against military, military against policemen, policemen against politicians, politicians against drug traffickers, and a range of possible variants involving even more recently formed paramilitary forces. This is a war that has already gone beyond the framework of drug trafficking and has turned into a mafia war, where crime cartels have expanded their criminal activities to include theft, extortion, abduction, trafficking of people, (mainly Central American immigrants), to name only a few. Moreover, these criminal activities are not confined to the actions of capos, politicians, corrupt security forces, producers, distributors and thugs, but is a phenomenon that has become increasingly integrated into the economic structures of the country.

UPRISING OF THE MASSES IN NORTH AFRICA AND THE ARABIC PEOPLE
THE SOLUTION: SECULAR GOVERNMENTS OF WORKERS AND THE OPPRESSED

EDITORIAL
The recent uprisings and massive protests, in some cases with insurrectional characteristics that started in Tunisia, continued in Algeria, Yemen, Morocco, Jordan and caused the overthrow of Mubarak in Egypt, the most important country in the region, do not seem to have an end in sight, geographically or politically. Currently Gadhafi is causing a bloodbath in Libya in his attempt to hold on to power.

Different analysts have speculated that these social explosions are a product of the economic crisis in Europe, particularly in France, England, Belgium and Italy. And they are correct in that the intensification of poverty, unemployment and lack of housing in the region have acted as an impetus to the present situation. However their analysis is incomplete. Equally important is the political/ideological and cultural development in the region.

The persistence of corrupt dictatorial governments, which have sold out the people and resources of the Middle East to allow for the growth of US, European, and Israeli colonialism coupled with the Western aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Western support for Israeli policy in Gaza and Palestine, have created mass frustration. These are some of the issues that have a deep impact on the consciousness of the masses and are as important as the economic causes. The governments of Tunisia, Algeria and Egypt, and many others, have built their regimes on the armed forces and on a continuous struggle against Fundamentalist Islamism which all of them see as an immediate and substantial danger.